7 Ways Successful Businesses Use Pinterest

What do LL Bean, Nordstrom, Sephora, Lowes and Real Simple Magazine all have in common? They are all dominating the fast-growing social network, Pinterest.

This success is directly resulting in increased sales and growth for their businesses. Studies have shown that 47% of online buyers in the U.S. have made a purchase based on something they saw on Pinterest (I know that I have).

Unmetric found that 90% of brands on Pinterest do not even pin once per week! This is a huge gap and a big opportunity for your business to wipe the floor with your competitors.

Successful brands pin at least once per day. They space out their pins for maximum exposure, rather than pinning 10 pins at once.

There are many tools available to manage your Pinterest account. If you want to use a scheduling tool to save time, check out this helpful post from Jeff Bullas on scheduling pins on Pinterest.

4) Pin videos.

Did you know that you can pin videos directly from YouTube and Vimeo onto Pinterest? You can!

If you have video content to share, or a YouTube/Vimeo channel, you should be using Pinterest to drive more views.

While Facebook remains the king of website referrals, last year Pinterest was responsible for 3.6% of referral traffic – more than Twitter. Many YouTube stars rely on Pinterest to drive views and generate more subscriptions.

5) Follow lots of people.

Successful businesses on Pinterest follow other brands, associations, partners, nonprofits and individuals. Pinterest is not like Facebook where business accounts cannot interact with or follow personal accounts.

To find your customers or other brands to follow, use the Pinterest Search bar.

Expert tip: Select one or more brands that are similar to your business and that have great boards or pins, and see who they follow! Note that you can follow specific Boards only – you do not need to follow the user’s entire account (this is helpful if they have a ton of Boards that are not relevant to you).

You can also discover trending and Popular Pins to see what is resonating on the site and see if it relates to your business and your customers. If it does, repin it!

6) Interact with other users.

Don’t just broadcast on Pinterest, take some time to interact. Social media should be social after all! Repin, like, comment on and send pins directly to your followers.

Mention individual Pinners in the caption of a pin by typing the [email protected] symbol and then their user name. They will receive a notification, and you will get extra Pinterest karma!

To accomplish your business marketing goals on Pinterest, you should not solely be repinning others’ content. You want users to find out about your brand, your company and your stories, so a good mix of pins should be consistently driving traffic to your website, your videos and your blog posts for more information.

When repinning, do so strategically. Find out what appeals to your audience.

What do they want to learn more about? What moves them? What interests them? Find pins related to those topics and you will be a Pinterest hero.

The goal should be to become a go-to resource and expert about your particular industry.

This monthly Pinterest column is contributed by Julia Campbell. Julia helps nonprofits raise money and connect with supporters using websites, email marketing, social media and other online tools. A social media specialist, she is the Principal and Founder of J Campbell Social Marketing, a boutique digital marketing firm in Beverly, MA. Julia has been featured on MarketWatch, Alltop, Salon, Social Media Today, Forbes and Business 2 Community.

About Julia Campbell

This monthly Pinterest column is contributed by Julia Campbell. Julia helps nonprofits raise money and connect with supporters using websites, email marketing, social media and other online tools. A social media specialist, she is the Principal and Founder of J Campbell Social Marketing, a boutique digital marketing firm in Beverly, MA. Julia has been featured on MarketWatch, Alltop, Salon, Social Media Today, Forbes and Business 2 Community.